We’re please to announce the 0.6.1 update of Chandler Server (Cosmo)!
Chandler Server is a database, server, and web UI for storing and managing personal information such as events and tasks. It implements standards such as CalDAV, WebDAV, Atom, and Atom Publishing Protocol.
This release focuses on the server side communication between Chandler Desktop and the Chandler Server. We have created a new HTTP-based synchronization protocol,
Morse Code http://wiki.osafoundation.org/Projects/CosmoMorseCode, which significantly decrease the time it takes to subscribe to and synchronize collections between the desktop and server.
The OSAF team has been busily focusing on our “Preview” releases — functional products that are interesting enough for people to try out and give us meaningful feedback. (”Preview” will not be 1.0 — more like a usable public beta). Our original goal was to have these releases ready this month — we’ve adjusted our schedule to June. The countdown to Preview is tracked on our wiki.
Help us!
If you are adventurous and want to help out the project, we’d love to have people trying out the desktop application and the web application even before we get to Preview. Find bugs and help us make it better! Join the users list, download the latest checkpoint of the desktop application, or check out the web application.
Branding
Chandler was originally a code name for the desktop application. After careful consideration, we decided to use the name for the whole group of products (the desktop application, the online service and the server that runs the service). We’ve chosen a domain name (chandlerproject.org), and we’re working on a new logo. We’re also cleaning up our wiki and our websites as we near Preview. We discuss this work on the general mailing list.
Chandler Desktop
The desktop project hit a feature complete milestone on April 9. New features include recurrence and auto-triage of items in the dashboard, editing and updating items via email, Chandler IMAP folders, context menus, a new sharing format, conflict management, and data migration features. The team is working on performance now, and will spend many weeks after that fixing bugs.
Chandler Server (Cosmo)
“Chandler Server” is our new name for Cosmo. The 0.6 release of Chandler server was described in an earlier post. The server team is currently wrapping up the 0.6.1 release, which implements a new sharing format for data exchange with the desktop application. The team has also started on the 0.7 release, which will allow users to view and edit shared tasks and events in a table.
“Chandler Hub” is our new name for the online service hosted by OSAF, running Chandler server. The service is currently running the 0.6 version of the server. We plan on moving to 0.6.1 in a few weeks, and upgrading to 0.7 in June. Once we’re ready to “Launch” Preview, we’ll use our new domain name (chandlerproject.org).
What’s new in Cosmo 0.6:
* Event editing on shared calendars without an account
* Better interoperability with other calendar applications ie. iCal, Sunbird, etc.
* Display of time zones on calendar events
* Notification of an updated event on a shared calendar
* New improvement to the Administrator UI
* Tons of bug fixes!
Find download information, installation instructions and release notes
at the Cosmo project website.
OSAF continues to work towards the Preview release of our products and
services currently scheduled for Spring 2007. Refer to the Preview
Countdown Page to keep track of our progress.
If you are already experimentally using Chandler and would like to try
Cosmo, you may need to make changes to your configuration, please
refer to Jared’s instructions on the general mailing list.
Please keep in mind we’re still working out the kinks in 0.6, so feel
free to send us feedback at chandler-users@osafoundation.org
OSAF continues to work towards the Preview release of our products and services currently scheduled for Spring 2007. Refer to the Preview Countdown Page to keep track of our progress.
Scott Rosenberg’s new book about OSAF’s first years comes out this month, titled Dreaming in Code. Scott is a friend of OSAF — he spent a lot of time in our office, hanging out in meetings as a sort of “embedded reporter”. I’m not going to comment on OSAF’s adventures during that time period — you can go read the book for yourself. Instead, I’ll give an update on what OSAF has been up to since Scott’s narrative leaves off, around the end of 2005. At that time, we had narrowed our focus to get a calendar working, cutting out many interesting features. Since then, we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve added a Dashboard for managing other types of information (including tasks, notes, messages) and improved polish, performance and reliability. The Preview release around April 2007 (described below) should be a good release for people to try out Chandler and Cosmo for the first time.
Cosmo
The Cosmo project was just getting started at the end of Scott’s book.
Cosmo is currently both a web calendar and a server for sharing data. The Chandler desktop application uses the Cosmo server to share data; shared calendars can also be viewed and edited in a browser using a Cosmo URL. Eventually Cosmo’s web client will be as full featured as Chandler, supporting tasks and other types of information. Cosmo’s server implements several standard protocols, so data can be accessed from other clients as well (including Apple iCal and Mozilla Sunbird). One of the big changes at OSAF in the last year has been the increasing importance of the Cosmo project. We’ve been designing Chandler and Cosmo so that they can be used in tandem.
Using Chandler and Cosmo at OSAF
With the release of Chandler 0.6 in late 2005, we started using Chandler and Cosmo at OSAF. Chandler at 0.6 was pretty rough — but we got good feedback and made significant improvements. The most recent milestone, Chandler 0.7alpha4, runs much more quickly on the Intel Mac, has a more polished calendar, and has the first workable Dashboard for tasks and notes. Several of us at OSAF brave the rough edges and use Chandler for our calendaring on a daily basis. Mitch and his assistant Esther are currently using 0.7alpha4 to share a calendar.
Preview
We set a major goal for ourselves last year: GET USERS OUTSIDE OSAF! We’ve been focusing on a “Preview” release for Chandler and Cosmo that will be functional and interesting for end users. While Preview will not include everything we want to accomplish for a 1.0 release, it will provide a tangible, plausible promise of the fully-fledged application we’d like to build.
Setting this goal has been a key step in transitioning to a “ship it” mindset from a more chaotic big tent of interesting ideas. Once Preview is out we can start building a community, since we’ll have something real people can use to solve real problems.
It was important to us that the Preview release contain some of the features that we’ve been excited about from the beginning: “stamping” features to blend tasks, events and notes; and “triage” features to manage important information in one view. It was also important to coordinate Chandler and Cosmo designs. We set a goal of Q1 2007 — my current best guess is that we will hit Preview in early April. Feedback from users will shape the remaining work towards a 1.0 release.
Informal workgroup collaboration
Early in 2006, we did a gut check and reevaluated our priorities. From the beginning of the project we struggled with too many ambitious and sometimes competing goals. The end result of a prioritization exercise was a tighter focus around small workgroup collaboration. Note that we never aspired to be an “Outlook killer” — we’re more passionate about solving problems for informal groups than for enterprises.
To make decisions about the feature set for Preview, we used the technique of identifying target users and the workflows they would use to accomplish their goals. Our keystone user is a person who sits in Chandler every day, using the desktop app for projects and tasks, as well as calendaring. We refer to this type of user as a “Hub”. The Hub interacts with “Casual Collaborators” — people in the Hub’s workgroup who don’t run their life with a calendar and task list or people outside of the group. The Hub might send a URL to the Casual Collaborator, who can then use that URL to access a calendar or task list on Cosmo. An example scenario: individual contributors in a workgroup edit their PTO on a shared office calendar (via Cosmo), which is largely maintained by a project manager (using Chandler). More info on target users and the Preview feature set for Chandler and Cosmo can be found on our wiki.
osaf.us
We’re going to host Cosmo as a free service starting in March or April (when Preview is ready) . Small groups will be able to use the service to share calendars and task lists instead of running their own Cosmo server. Someday we’d like small workgroups to be able to run their own Cosmo server without much hassle, but that will require more work. Braver souls can download Cosmo and try it out, though.
CalDAV and interoperability
CalDAV is an emerging calendaring standard; Scott chronicles a bit of Lisa Dusseault’s involvement breathing life into CalDAV. Cosmo is a CalDAV server and Chandler is a CalDAV client. OSAF remains committed to supporting standards based interoperability — we test against other servers and clients at Calconnect events and fix bugs when we find them.
People
Several people mentioned in Scott’s book are no longer working with OSAF, including Andy Hertzfeld, Michael Toy, and Chao Lam. Lisa Dusseault moved on to focus on IETF work as an Area Director. Each of these people made significant positive contributions to the project. We have new talented developers and designers working on Cosmo and Chandler who don’t appear in the book, appear only briefly, or have taken on new roles. The current team deserves a lot credit for pulling Chandler and Cosmo together as healthy, productive projects. I’m pretty excited about both and am really looking forward to Preview.
Randy joins OSAF as a Server Devleoper on the Cosmo team after working on Cosmo while at his previous employer. Read more about Randy on our people page.
Numerous activities has been keeping me busy on the Scooby project. The most recent news is the approval of the merge with the Cosmo project. Along with the merge, we’re currently referring to the Scooby project as Cosmo. Please be patient as we’re currently in the middle of moving all the Scooby content and documentation over to Cosmo for the next release. In addition, we are hosting a mini-Cosmo sprint/pow wow sessions next week, from August 15th-18th. Keep a watchful eye as the next release of Cosmo will be the most exciting one yet!
I am delighted to announce the release of Scooby 0.2! We launched on June 22nd, 2006. Please view the demo and download the code on the Scooby homepage. Scooby will be tightly integrated with Cosmo 0.4 and packaged with the OSAF server bundle.
What’s new in Scooby 0.2
Navigation
You are now able to ‘Log out’ of Scooby instead of letting it time out. The collection name is displayed in place of the path name when you subscribe or move your collection into Scooby.
Visual Polish
There are a few visual tweaks made to create a more consistent feel with Chandler, but only where it makes sense as a web application. Similarities between Scooby and Chandler include the following: The lozenge gradient color for selected and confirmed events, the timeline displayed on the left, and ‘Noon’ time indicator to differenciate between mornings & afternoons. Unique to Scooby are stylized buttons and the Scooby logo.
Managing Events
Users may now view recurring events in Scooby. You can overlap events within the same calendar. Scooby can also display the event status of an event: Confirmed, Tentative, and FYI.
Coding Standards
The Scooby team reorganized JS files into folders resembling packages in Java and added the Dojo JavaScript framework to the project.
